Thursday night, about 1,000 job seekers went back to school, flooding the college to sign up for rapid training -- hoping to begin new careers where the demand for workers is biggest: paralegal, and health care.

The new term starts next week.

"They can't find skilled people," Dean Calhoun said of employers who are hiring. "So our job is to make sure that we train people in the skills that these companies need... And you can come in and be trained and you could be in the job market, in most cases, if you're good at what you do, within a year."

Dean Calhoun said the college is not currently able to track all graduates, but, "we can anecdotally say, but not scientifically say, that we're looking at a 40 percent rate of people who do get jobs when they take our classes."

"Firms are going to have to replace workers, because you just can't have one person doing the job of three people forever," Dr. Smith said. "Keep trying. I mean, the truth is that the economy is getting better. We've seen the unemployment rate fall a full percentage point in the last year."

So, that's what's next, according to Dr. Smith -- firms that downsized during the recession can't continue much longer with skeleton staffs.

"It's not that employers can't hire. They are very profitable. And we're seeing they have a lot of excess cash. But they're waiting" for some proof that the economy won't take another nose dive, he said, or that regulations won't make it more expensive to employ additional workers than it is to operate with insufficient staff sizes.